Asides

As a consultant, there is no substitute for being ‘in the room’ when discussions about change are taking place. Getting your message across and building trust with your client that you or your team has the ability to deliver a working solution to an apparently unworkable deadline is a lot easier while the requirements are being aired with urgency.

If you are not, you could use a colleague who is onsite, a consultant/recruiter with access or utilise your own network to get to someone who is in the room. If you are, according to the well-worn phrase, a maximum of 6 times removed from everyone on Earth then you are effectively in the same Northern line train carriage as everyone in the City.

To extend the metaphor, this does not mean that networking in financial services is any more comfortable a proposition than striking up a conversation on the Tube. How does a motley bunch of your family, friends, family friends, ex-colleagues and names-from-business-cards help you gain access to The Project Sponsor?

Who knows you well? Who trusts you? Who do they know? All of these are either known, searchable or guess-able. The key to finding out which of a network’s connections are actually the working neurons of mutually beneficial exchange is to know, of your allies: who trusts them?

There are no shortcuts here – clarity of communication and honesty of purpose are the only ways to stand out from the spam. So pick your target, plan your route to them and bring people into your confidence by asking, about their connections: how well do you know them?